“Peace Through the Cross”-Sermon for CATM October 29, 2006
He was imprisoned in 1964 for fighting against injustice and racism. He was released 1990 because foreign governments pressured an evil regime to reform with severe economic sanctions.
He was a hero, a pace-setter. He was voted president of the country that had unjustly imprisoned him for 25 years. He had enough moral authority to do whatever he wanted.
He could have turned the majority of the nation against their former oppressors with a snap of his fingers.
He could have achieved vengeance and retaliation on a scale rarely seen in history. And few would have criticized him. All would have understood. We’ve seen it before.
Instead, he established this: Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
A kilometer or so from where you are sitting there is a school named after him. I’m talking, of course, about Nelson Mandela. Wherever he goes in the world he is recognized as a great man, a brave man, a forgiving man. One of the greatest men of your or my lifetime.
But it’s this word: Reconciliation, that he brought into the modern vocabulary. What does it mean?
To reconcile means to bring into agreement or harmony, make compatible. It’s a loaded word because it’s easy to say it...Can we all say the word: Reconcile?
It’s easy to say but it’s really, really tough to do. Why? Because the word itself suggests that there is disagreement, disunity.
There may have once been unity and harmony, but it has been lost. There was once peace, but peace has been lost. Relationship has been lost; it’s been replaced...by hostility
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was set up to investigate crimes committed and violence and human rights abuses that occurred under Apartheid, that country’s policy of official racial discrimination and to restore the dignity of victims and to make recommendations on rehabilitation and healing of survivors, their families and communities at large.
A huge part of the process was creating a process whereby the doers of evil, the perpetrators of oppression and abuse, received amnesty, an official pardon during which the abusers were forgiven their crimes.
The end goal, like I said, was peace. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee is no more. It has completed it’s work in South Africa.
Reconciliation is why South Africa did not descend into civil war or genocide.
Now, our key scripture today identifies another problem in the world. To put it simply, God’s creation...us...was in a place of broken relationship with God, our creator. The reasons were, at least on the surface, not too hard to understand.
God made us to live in a love relationship with Himself, a relationship of mutual love and caring. A relationship where our well-being was tied into recognizing the facts of who God is and who we are. That is, quite simply, that we are human and God is God.
But humankind chose to assert itself as though it were like God. The serpent said: “...You will be like God, knowing both good and evil,” if you do this thing that God specifically forbade them to do.
And the man and the woman were convinced that this would be a good thing, and so they disobeyed. They entered a distortion of their relationship with God. They believed a lie. This distortion led to their banishment from God’s presence.
And shortly after that the fruit of this lie became clear. Murder entered the world. And all kinds of sin and selfishness and wickedness.
And God, who is holy and righteous and pure, was grieved because the choices of men and women were continually evil. There was separation, disagreement, disunity. Harmony had been lost. Relationship has been lost; it’s been replaced...by hostility.
Each of here today knows what this feels like. We know how it feels to be really far away from God. We know what if feels like to be empty. We know the sting of guilt. We know that terrible sense of God’s absence. The reason we know this is because all of us sin. And sin, like it did for the first man and first woman, separates us from God. That’s the bad news.
But our scripture passage today leads us to and through the good news. It tells us that God made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
What does it mean to have peace with God? I’ve heard people say that if Jesus walked in the room they would walk right up to him, pat Him on the back and say, “Hey, How’s it goin’? Very, very casual. As though it were a meeting of equals. Not really understanding just who it is that would be entering the room.
Sometimes, if our understanding of who God is too small, if our understanding of our own sinfulness is too casual and hasn’t really been thought through, we don’t really get that there is a difference between us and God. This can get a little complicated too.
Someone I know who is really struggling with his faith stately boldly the other day that he had come to understand that the universe is God and it was clear he thought that was a stunning revelation, a great new and important truth.
One of the first things that happens when we go away from the revelation of scripture is that our image of God shrinks. The universe is God? The God of the Bible is not that small. He made the universe and everything it contains. He is vastly greater, of course, than his creation.
An important step to having peace with God is simply recognizing that God is God and we are not. That God is holy, and we are not. We’re sinful. We’re sinners.
Every one of us. If we get that, the effect should be to make us humble. To want to come before God and admit our sinfulness. To admit that we’ve been living without Him in our lives. But it can be tough to admit this.
An OPP officer ran into trouble while investigating a routine traffic mishap. His problem began after he had interviewed witnesses, arrested one of the drivers, and written up the accident report. He suddenly noticed that the offending motorist was chewing on something that wasn’t gum.
He was eating the report! The officer reached for the disappearing paper, only to get his hand caught in a bite that lasted about 2 minutes. Despite his efforts to retrieve the report, it was destroyed.
But the delay was only temporary. The patrolman tracked down the witnesses again and recompiled the damaging evidence.
We may not be so brazen as the guilty motorist in covering our sins, but we all do it, just the same:
1. We make excuses for ourselves ("that’s just the way I am")
2. We point at others and cry that they were guilty too... (like the child who cries: "but he hit me first")
3. Or we compare ourselves with someone else: "I’m just as good as..." (Paul wrote that when compare ourselves with others, we prove that we are not wise)
4. Or we break out the scale. You know the one I mean. The one where we weigh our sins against our good actions and hope that the good outweighs the bad.
The good news is that we don’t have to make excuses. We don’t have to compare, we don’t have to blindly hope that our good will outweigh our bad and maybe just maybe God will accept us in the end.
Romans 5:9-11 says this: “And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation”.
Sin brings condemnation. When it’s not dealt with, when it’s not confessed, The blood of Christ makes you right in God’s eyes.
Now some say, “That’s too easy. If I don’t have to work for it, if it’s not me paying for my sins myself, I just can’t appreciate it. “It’s cheap”.
It may be relatively easy for us, but it’s not cheap.
An American business man enjoyed the famous Passion Play at Eureka Springs, Arkansas. After the play, the man went backstage to meet the actor who portrayed Jesus.
As they talked, the man saw the cross that the actor carried in the play. Before the actor had a chance to stop him, the business man handed over his camera and said, "Hey, take a picture of me carrying the cross." He bent over and tried in vain to lift the huge cross to his shoulders.
With sweat rolling down his face, he turned in frustration to the actor and said, "I thought it would be hollow; why is it so heavy?" With a smile of compassion the actor answered, "If I could not feel the weight of it, it would be impossible to play the part."
When Jesus went to Calvary, He carried our sins with Him. Perhaps this reality alone caused the cross to weigh so heavy upon the strong shoulders of the carpenter from Nazareth.
Unless we feel this weight He bore, we will never fully understand the meaning of being in debt to Jesus. Of how much He has done for you. For me.
Romans 5 continues: 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
Jesus died a RECONCILING death. You’ve heard the scripture, “The wages of sin is death”. Well ,once there was no peace between us and God because of sin. Because of Jesus death, we are made friends with God. Friends with God.
The first step toward peace with God is always repentance. We take an honest inventory of ourselves and we see we’re going down the wrong path. We make the choice to turn away from sin and toward God.
The next step toward peace with God is what today’s passage is all about. It involves faith, it involves believing that God has made peace with you by Christ’s blood on the cross. Jesus said: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”. Mt 26:28
It was important that Jesus shed his blood. “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin” (Heb.9:22). They could have choked Him to death. They could have poisoned Him.
But, Jesus needed to shed his blood. Crucifixion was a bloody form of death. John said about Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus was the ultimate sin sacrifice. From the time of Adam and Eve death has been required to cover sin. Why so much focus on the cross of Christ, the suffering of Christ? Because, it is the turnkey for inclusion. The cross connects heaven and earth.
It is almost like God used the cross as a key to unlock access into His presence. The cross is the access key with Jesus riveted to the face of it. The cross is our symbol of access to God.
The heart of the Christian faith, the centre of all that we do and are, is that we are a people who have been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus.
I’m tempted to stop there, but to stop there might just leave us unbalanced. We are reconciled to God when we trust in Christ’s sacrifice for us that has restored us to God. So far it’s me and God. You and Jesus.
And that’s an important beginning. Without that personal encounter with God and personally receiving Jesus Christ, there is no relationship with God as God wants it. Sin still would get in the way.
There’s no other way around the problem of sin than the cross, where the blood of the covenant was poured out for many for the remission of sins, as Jesus said the night before He suffered.
But once you and I are reconciled, what do we do? Is it about just being saved or is there more to it. Of course there is.
2 Cor 5:18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
We become reconcilers. We receive the gift of salvation, of life that comes from the hand of God, and we live that gift. We become that gift to others. As the scripture says: “God has given us this task of reconciling people to him”.
What an amazing privilege. What an honour that you have been chosen by God to lead people to peace through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Show Video: This Hand
Song: Once Again
